The SSPS-CRS plant was inaugurated as part of the International Energy Agency’s SSPS project (Small Solar Power Systems) en September 1981. At the present time, as with the CESA-I plant, it is a test facility devoted mainly to testing small solar receivers in the 200 to 350kW thermal capacity range. The heliostat field is made up of 92 39.6 m2 first generation units. Under typical conditions of 950 W/m2, total thermal capacity of the field is 2.7 MW and peak flux obtained is above 2.0 MW/m2. 99% of the power is collected in a 2.5m dia. circumference and 90% in a 1.8m circumference.

For these experiments, two height levels at the tower were taken into consideration to find the optimum location. For this experiment, the receiver reactor will be placed at the 40m-level of the SSPS-tower. The performance that can be expected from the receiver was presented in a previous paper [4].